Lambchop

you're both nerds

Makes them sound like Dntel in 2002

I find it suits the timbre of the music just fine; it's made their move toward easy liquidity more pronounced. Plus, I trust Wagner, which makes it easier to go with it.

the vocal processing suits the watery texture of the music well

the whole album (it's out there) is very pretty, feels like floating in a lake

It seems a bit passé, no?

(the track that was posted)

i love this weird underwater soft rock album

this is very different.... but very good?

To stick with the water metaphors, it washed over me and left behind virtually no jetsam whatsoever.

Can't stand the vocals, it's like someone has peed in my glass of water.

it's perfect background music but still there's the occasional standout moment like the sublime solo in "the new isn't so you anymore"

oh my god y’all it’s just a vocoder

^^ amen.

It's spring and there's a weak sun out and this just flows over me in such a beautiful and tender way. He's set out on this path some years ago and seems to want to make his music "smaller", smoother, and it's just the best direction he could take.

damn this album is beautiful

one of the reasons i struggled (and still struggle) with flotus was bc wagner's lyrical voice was largely absent or broken into unintelligible fragments. but on this record it's back baby!!!!

all the songs are just these weird collapsing waves of instrumental and vocal hooks

i think this is already one of my absolute favorite lambchop records

Yeah, it's great. It demonstrates huge strides in them embracing this style that the last album only suggested ("The Hustle" aside)

"the lasting last of you" is just... what even is that

The harmonica solo on the opener is my fave moment of anything so far this year

i love that solo so much

this album is maybe the closest in texture to the donkey kong country soundtrack out of anything i've ever heard

oh my god y’all it’s just a vocoder

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Friday, 22 March 2019 13:09 (three days ago) Bookmark

there's no just here.

thinking about the vocal processing on this album an obvious future collaborator would be b.j. burton and from there i'm dreaming of something that pushes this album's direction even further and ends up in like... sophisti-pop meets loveless territory

something that bridges the gap between "to here knows when" (via double negative etc.) and "aquatic ambience"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5rAjOjTGtc

like push the weird underwater sophisti-pop thing further, add in a lot more echoey woodwinds and a bit of distortion here and there

one of the reasons i struggled (and still struggle) with flotus was bc wagner's lyrical voice was largely absent or broken into unintelligible fragments.

Yeah I feel this to a certain extent. I like FLOTUS as an experimental/transitional record in their discography, but there’s also a reason that my favorite tracks on it are “The Hustle” and “In Care Of…” - at the end of the day his words are the main draw for me. A 2nd FLOTUS would have been kind of a letdown for me, glad to hear that this has more focus on lyrics.

the opener on this is like a warm bath to me

I'm quite literally in a warm bath listening to this and somehow my shitty phone speaker is helping this make sense: when I think back to what I've always loved about Lambchop, it's really Wagner and his voice and words that mean the most - the warp and weft of the incredible bands he amasses are like an extraordinary bonus; it's this that's coming through loud and clear third time around. I'll happily grow old with him.

"the lasting last of you" is just... what even is that

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Sunday, March 24, 2019 12:22 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's nearly overwhelmingly gorgeous, is what it is.

most of the tracks on FLOTUS just feel like experimental sketches exploring the possibility of the new sound palette they'd developed but with little in the way of traditional songs. "The Hustle" is a triumph of course, and the rest of the album has its moments but it doesn't really do much for me as an album.

the new album takes the sound palette established on FLOTUS but has much stronger and more traditional songwriting - despite the sound the songs really don't feel very far removed from say Is A Woman - and the result is a triumph

Looking forward to listening to this and revisiting earlier works for context. Hitting Silver Platters today for this and These New Puritans, then a sandwich from Paseo. That's a good afternoon!

I'd say that FLOTUS gets by on the strength of In Care of 8675309 and The Hustle and the rest of the in between sketches.

Just picked this up today and LOL'd at the quote on the hype sticker: "Picture yourself on a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies... This is not that." - Kurt Wagner

Just got back home in Houston after traveling in Japan for a week. I had loaded lots of new music on the Nano, but the only thing i listened to the entire trip was This (Is What I Wanted To Tell You) on repeat. It was perfect for airports and wandering unfamiliar streets. Dozing on the plane and waking up to it. The album just gets better and unfolds itself the more it plays.

I enjoyed FLOTUS a lot, but I agree that this beats it easily.

god i LOVE this album, warm bath otm

still quite possibly my aoty

a great choice

it is fighting with copeland and cate le bon for me rn and it may win

it's amazing that this thing is so smooth and beautifully-formed yet doesn't achieve that by traditional means at all. the songs are constructed as if they were overlapping waves, arriving from and flowing out into every direction at once

cw: i'm bringing up rym but i find it hilarious that they hate this record bc i think it sounds like... properly "new" music? never heard anything like this before, and it's carried off so successfully, with such a sure hand

the spin review really nailed it https://www.spin.com/2019/03/lambchop-this-is-what-i-wanted-to-tell-you-review/

Sheesh Brad, you weren't kidding. It's a fabulous review. It gets right what all the others seemingly don't understand. It highlights why Wagner's turn to auto-tune isn't just a gimmick but is taking his music to a whole new level:

"Rather than cloaking or recasting the Nashville songwriter’s singing, the vocoder-style effect enhances and highlights its various aspects, like the sun hitting the same objects in a living room at different times of day."

This is a metaphor so beautiful and true I wish I'd written it.

yeah it's really funny how much rym hates it seemingly just for "wtf why does he have autotune on his voice" when its one of the most interesting and best uses of it as an effect i've ever heard, works so wonderfully with the music. helps that the songs are so wonderful too.

what if you just dgaf about the creative deployment of the effect and just plain hate the sound of autotune? Like the way people hate slap bass and banjos? Because that would describe me and also why I find this album unlistenable (I loved FLOTUS)

Then peace be with you, friend

otm, hating the sound of an instrument or an effect is a very personal reaction that has little to do with whether the music works or not, thankfully there are so many lambchop records that do not use autotune

well FLOTUS had the same effect everywhere too so idk but i love the way it sounds a lot more on this album

FLOTUS also uses autotune on most of the songs, doesn't it?

yes

and i'd also agree it sounds even better on the new one

LOL, I thought you all *were* talking about FLOTUS and that FLOTUS *was* the new album! I guess I'm too far out of the Lambchop loop, sorry Lambchop.

So loving FLOTUS and not being able to tolerate the sound of autotune seem like tough things to reconcile?

(NB I haven't heard the new one yet and am very excited to do so because I too loved FLOTUS but I thought the autotune on that was amazing and surprising.)